What's In It For Them? - Value Outcomes

I hope it goes without saying that what matters most about your business offering is the value that your customers get from buying it from you. This is the “What’s In It For Me?” that is the only thing the customers are really interested in.

I have been working on Value Outcomes recently and I have been studying the promotional material put out by some of the Marketing experts whose ideas I trust and believe in. In promoting their own services there are some very apparent and totally common threads. I don’t think it would be a bad idea if the rest of us copied them, especially those of us who sell our skill, experience, expertise and time.

I also looked at the promotional material of other service providers and found some mis-matches - OK I’ll admit some of my own stuff falls into this category, but that’s why I’m working on it! - which helped reinforce for me the good sense of following the experts.

The first thing to notice is that the experts’ material is much more densely packed with Value Outcomes than that of other service providers. The experts don’t stop when they’ve found one, they want loads. It would be a fair bet to say they’re always looking for more.

After separating the Value Outcomes from the ‘chaff’ in the other providers’ stuff, they could be categorised into five groups:
– True value
– Learning
– So what?
– I expected to be able to take that for granted
– Bu..s..it!

The fraction that were ‘true value’ was not huge either! However, in the case of the experts there was nothing representing the last three items, and true value and learning were in the ratio 5:1 to 10:1.

I rest my case!

The six common threads in what the experts are saying are:
– Numbers - of good things you’ll receive
– Time - either time saved, or how quickly you can put the advice
into action
– FREE - “stuff” whose value is established by including some of the
other points
– Regular - they’ll deliver value to you at a pace at which you can
easily absorb it - more Readers Digest than War and Peace
– Exclusive - not just that they’ve written it, but that the information
it contains is either unavailable through any other source, or that
it has been distilled from the very best practitioners in
whatever the art
– Growth - of your business, which is taken as read but is also
stated quite often

I hope this enables you to start adding more Value Outcomes to your promotions - don't forget to ask the customers for their opinions of what is or would be most valuable - and to cull the ‘chaff’ and unproductive outcomes to make room for it.

David